The Thin White Duke (Sept 2011)

The Thin White Duke's third visit to the Fox and Duck in a year was just as good and just as well received as the others.

I managed to get there promptly this time (despite working in Cardiff that day) and grabbed a seat on the bench by the wall on the right-hand side of the pub. This had the advantages of being more comfortable than standing for three hours and of reducing the temptation to dance but the down-side is that all the pictures that I took were from the same angle.

So there are lots of shots of the lead singer and bass guitarists but none of the lead guitar, keyboards or drummer. There time will come another day.

The Fox and Duck filled quickly with a surprisingly wide age range of Bowie fans.

The age gaps became apparent as the set progressed with us oldies most eager to mouth the word to the songs from Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust while the youngsters were keener on the Let's Dance era.

One of the reasons that The Thin White Duke are so popular is that they trawl large swathes of the extensive Bowie back-catalogue and carefully extract a mix of songs that sound quite varied but which are united in their quality.

They also play the songs with a lot of love and skill. They bill themselves as, "The tribute band made by Bowie fans, for Bowie fans", and it shows.

The full set kicks in with Rebel Rebel from Diamond Dogs. A rocking song and a single too. The singing-along starts immediately and legs start to twitch expectantly.

As the evening progresses we get large chunks of Ziggy Stardust, fair smatterings of Hunk Dory and snippets from most of the other albums from Space Oddity (1969) to Let's Dance (1983).

The Berlin period was previously represented by the lone Heroes but was joined this time by Breaking Glass and Be My Wife from the musical medley that is the first side of Low.

You can always argue about the songs left out of the set but with some thirteen original albums in this period to choose from there is always going to be more left out than included in.

And while I'd love to hear all 9 minutes and 33 seconds of Cygnet Committee, I suspect that would not be a popular choice with everybody else. One day.

The Thin White Duke return to the Fox and Duck on 3 December and you know that I'll be there too.